About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

P is for Papo - 1 - Brain's Met' Visits

Mr Berke, friend of this parish, sent us some of these shots a month or so ago, after he had popped-up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY (one of the benefits of living in/near a major city is that you can 'pop-up' to world beating venues!); they following the little lot I found before Christmas, I - wondering what size the monochrome ones were -  asked him for more details and he kindly went back and got the answers, which came with more images last week.

Since when there have been a few developments, and as a result we're going to have a Papo mini-season, but we'll start with the 'follow-up'.

These are the same size (the 'Mini' line) as the set we looked at the other day, but in a monochrome finish of silver and gold, there is a set of knights as well, but Brian shot the fantasy set, as much to illustrate the weird juxtaposition of selling fantasy 'things' in a museum dedicated to actual, antiquey, 'things'! And yes I made up the word Antiquey! Turns-out I didn't; Spellchecker just didn't like it!

As we will see later in the mini-season, there are painted versions of this set, and some of the poses are based on figures from the larger sized range, such as the skeletal warrior and the Ork-like, Schreckanator!

A close-up of the header-card showing clearly the design features of the figure most closely answering to the title 'Ring Wraith'!

When Brian B returned to the Met' he managed to pose the set next to a full sized one for direct comparison. Papo themselves (I was chatting to them on Tuesday - as you do!) don't give them a scale or a specific size, describing the new ranges as 55% (Mini+ 56mm) and 45% (Mini 40mm) of the size of the 'standard' (70mm) range.

These are the 45% figures (as were the ones the other day) and they weigh-in at about 40mm.

Another full-size one on display in the Metropolitan, the heraldic charge in the background (of a Griffon?) makes him look a bit like a wing'ed avenging angel!

More fantasy in the museum! There are several nice dragons on-sale alongside the skeletons, Orks and co., and while I guess anything which might encourage the kids back for more has to be applauded, one does wonder why the shelf-space isn't just given-over to more [factual] knights!

I'm not sure if these are both Papo, the silver one was available from Papo last year in a brown paint-scheme, is also available in Gold, and a new version for 2018 is in a green scheme, I can't find the blue one at all, so it might be worth picking-up either of them if you're passing the Metropolitan and happen to be into large dragons!

The real McCoy - being actual, factual knights! They look a bit familiar, and while one suit of armour looks pretty similar to another suit of armour (of the same period) I'm wondering if these may have been used as the basis for some of the Aurora plastic kits or the Marx polyethylene large-scale figures?

Thanks to Brain for the shots and there's more Papo on the way.

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